


you appeared like a body bag fulla hymnal books

by theviolonist



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 15:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the sake of argument: let's say this is the end of the world, Penelope never finished that fucking tapestry, the sky didn't fall on our heads but well, maybe the seas did rise up and swallow a few or a thousand cities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you appeared like a body bag fulla hymnal books

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Buddy Wakefield's _A Hole in God_.

 

**1**

For the sake of argument: let's say this is the end of the world, Penelope never finished that fucking tapestry, the sky didn't fall on our heads but well, maybe the seas did rise up and swallow a few or a thousand cities. Everyone said it was just Poseidon having a bad day for sure, his horses look a little freaky this time of year but it's nothing to worry about. Turned out they were wrong. Scheherazade, who was always the most sensible raconteur around, scuttered back under the covers and even Alice figured she was safer undeground.

For the sake of argument: let's say the way you count is the way other people talk, always in binary, 1 0 1 and the unending curl of your numbers in chalk on the blackboard is akin to a conversation. Let's say what you see in the twisted infinity sign is what I see in the crooked helix and the skin of monsters. Let's say you saw me standing behind the glass, fingers splayed and my own numbers to say I. love. you., let's say you scoffed because who has time for this kind of things when the war is raging outside and everything might end any minute?

(Me. You. We have time for this kind of things, you refuse to admit it but your lips taste like blood and, unsurprisingly, ginseng.)

 

 

**2**

What was it you said: _do you mistake yourself for a painting, doctor?_ I know the whole arsenal of your sneers by heart now; I have learned all there is to learn of you with a diligence I apply only to science. Don't tell this to the mythologies swirling in coloured ink between my ribs, but you have become my favorite subject. If you were a book there would not be one page that I wouldn't have dog-eared, even though you will prefer to think that I stained them all with bitter stay-awake coffee or left them stuck together and stiff. But listen to this: I do believe that I am a painting. Bosch is a little heavy, I'll grant you that, but I roll with the times.

(Listen to this: I do believe I am a painting, a puzzle, and you, right there, are the completing piece.)

 

 

**3**

For the sake of argument: mathematics might have been the handwriting of God but you know as well as I do that God has given up on us, if he ever cared at all. If you need proof, you can come with me to the place where there is no water in the ocean, only the blood of warriors fallen and the cogs and wheels of their dismantled armors. You and me are in part to blame for the failures that cost parents their children, you know: the seas might open before us, if we're not careful. [Look at you. You say you know the mind of God but the meaning of something as basic as the ten plagues evades you. Shame on you. Or at least: that's what I would say if I hadn't learned my hermeneutics on the grain of your skin.]

The rain –

                 what am I talking about. There's no rain. Humans are 70% liquid, not counting blood; what we think is rain is only redistributed water, recycled to make us think someone is still looking over us.

 

 

**4**

                 (Did you know? In Korean rain is 'bi'. Don't you like the shortness of it, the taste, sweet and tart, blade-sharp? And tell me: do you understand anything besides the colors of the sky, the way tea burns when you touch it with your tongue and the scritch of your numbers on your skin?)

**5**

_Matthew 27:45: my God, why hast thou forsaken me?_

Good question.

 

**6**

(You are convinced that we could have been greater, taller, able to walk for weeks on end without faltering, our hands stretching before us to mark the edges of the universe. [I've often wondered if you see the stars differently because you are colorblind; is it the sourness of your light that has twisted downwards the corners of your mouth?] Our minds alone have cracked the earth's surface: give us a string of algorithms or a monster and we are every genius you've ever heard of, Michelangelo, Marie Curie, Alexander, brains working faster than your heart beats when another disaster strikes too close to your house. You know that. In yourself, beneath the hatred, you keep a vat of arrogance, a Pandora's box which only I can peek at, and marvel.)

**7**

For the sake of argument: let's say I don't know you love me like I love you, to distraction and to ruin; let's say that this is only the dress rehearsal for the apocalypse – then what? You and me – do we defeat evil and run? You must know it doesn't work like that. Let's climb, then: I've heard there is a place where you can be even closer, drift, swift like a fish, in the vast pit of knowledge – and isn't that what we've dreamed of from the beginning? We just have to wait for our turn. We'll sit in the dark for a bit. Did I ever tell you I was born in the countryside, in my country where rain tastes like summer? In the mud swamp the fireflies would swarm.

For the sake of argument: for once you are not afraid of darkness and you, too, press your hand against the glass. Your knuckles clink. Your kiss is made of atoms and fire. Our world is a metro station, awash with fluorescent lights, and I am not the only one ablaze from the inside with our absent God's toxic nuclear refuse.

(Ich. Liebe. Dich. You're right. It does sound better in the mothertongue, but I would still burn down that Babel place for you.)

 

 

**8**

Come on. Let's go.

 


End file.
